Nei Musei il multimediale diventerà “facile”. Prontuario di progetto

Abstract

In the near future, will it be the curators themselves who will design, install and use video-walls, video-mapping, and other multimedia technologies? The natural evolution of the systems and products now already partially available on the market, seems to be user friendliness. So, why should museums take this same road and what guidelines should they use?
The reasons: 1) To economize (in the phases of supply, integration and installation, but especially on maintenance costs); 2) ease of use for museum staff including updating of the contents.
The ways to do this: 1) The employment of new professional figures skilled in scouting out technological products and solutions; 2) a planning and manage-ment model for multimedia communication that includes certain key principles:
- the centrality of the cultural and scientific content;
- museological need: why a multimedia technology has been chosen (physical and/or cultural accessibility, a need to boost attention, stimulate the senses, etc.);
- the importance of the language used (integration with the museum project as a whole).
This contribution includes a summary report of one test using selected technology carried out with some curators (from the Egyptian Museum of Turin), in addition to a brief examination of the current situation of museological research, the new pro-fessional figures, and multimedia communication, with the objective of creating a preliminary design and management handbook for curators, so that multimedia sys-tems will become “user-friendly” in museums and even the Director will be able to install and update them, in addition to confirming their content.